McCain aide spread dossier around DC after Trump won the election

David Kramer, the John McCain aide who leaked the discredited Christopher Steele dossier on President Trump, testified in a libel case that he spread the unsubstantiated anti-Trump material all over Washington during the presidential transition.

Mr. Kramer, a former State Department official and a Trump detractor, leaked dossier material to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Posts Fred Hiatt, CNNs Carl Bernstein, National Public Radio, McClatchy news service and others, he said.

This was after the election. McCain, who is now dead and will not be missed, was a fool and a traitor to his party, his country, and the Constitution he swore to defend.

Strzok: Mueller never asked about texts

After the anti-Trump texts came to light, Mueller booted Strzok from the special counsel probe, but according to the FBI agent's testimony, Mueller's team never asked him whether the anti-Trump bias revealed in his text messages impacted his investigation of alleged collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia.

In the June 2018 hearing, Strzok repeated over and over that Mueller's team never asked him about the anti-Trump bias in the texts or whether that bias impacted his work. This news seems particularly damning since it suggests the special counsel's team did not care whether Strzok's work was colored by anti-Trump bias.

Of course they didn't care. They were all equally biased, and they knew what they were there to do: keep the heat on Trump and sweep SpyGate under the rug.

Hateful organization fires founder

Southern Poverty Law Center Fires Founder Morris Dees. The SPLC announced Thursday afternoon that Deeswho in 1971 co-founded the far-left nonprofit, which has regularly been cited by major outlets over the years for its hate group designations that oftentimes lump Republican groups in with actual racist groupshas parted ways with its founder.

Word is they are also hiring an outside auditor. The rumor is sexual harassment was involved.

Apparently their accounting was about as honest as their libelous list of so-called "hate groups".

CA Supreme Court reinstates Newtown lawsuit

A divided Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled gun-maker Remington can be sued over how it marketed the Bushmaster rifle used to kill 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook.Justices issued a 4-3 ruling that reinstated a wrongful death lawsuit and overturned a lower-court ruling that the lawsuit was prohibited by a 2005 federal law that shields gun manufacturers from liability in most cases when their products are used in crimes.

This lawsuit pretty much blatantly violates the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms act. It's being reinstated now because the Left sees this as their last chance to get some anti-gun rulings through the court. Right now, Roberts is seen as right-leaning but wobbly on ... well, pretty much everything. There's still a chance of a 4-4 tie with Roberts as the remaining swing vote. But if Ginsburg takes her lace collar to her final destination in the next two years, Trump will probably get to appoint her replacement. If the left wants a chance at anti-gun rulings, it's now, or wait until Trump is out.

In case you've forgotten how much bullshit this lawsuit has, the Newtown killer murdered his mother in her bed to obtain the guns he used.

Another real hate crime

New Zealand murderer's left-wing beliefs

Aside from his apparent opposition to Islam and general racism (neither of which are limited to the right), his views are left-wing: environmentalist, anti-individualist, anti-capitalist. He opposes immigration due to the environmental impact.

That's not to say the left is to blame for his actions. Only individuals are responsible for their actions. But it would be equally wrong to blame the right for his actions -- by, for example, passing gun control laws.

Florida legislation to give drivers' licenses to illegal aliens

Illegal immigrants could get valid Florida drivers licenses under proposed legislation that would accept foreign passports, international birth certificates and Mexican consular cards as proof of identity. As is the case in most states, current Florida law requires residents to prove U.S. citizenship or provide a resident alien greed card to obtain a drivers license. Two separate measuresintroduced this month in the House and Senatewould let illegal aliens in the Sunshine State get valid cards.

What do you do when you sign up for a drivers' license?

By federal law, you are offered the chance to register to vote. Most people probably just say yes. There's no citizenship check or proof required. Probably there will be rules that illegal aliens shouldn't register to vote that way. But they will be ignored. "Mistakes" will be made. They already are made, often, in states like California that offer similar benefits to their population of illegals. And once registered, voter ID laws won't matter; the illegal aliens will have the ID needed to vote, and they'll be on the list.

Hopefully they won't pass. But if they do -- that would quite likely forever tip Florida into the Democrats column for presidential races, which would make it almost impossible for Republicans to win as the current political landscape looks. And if you look at many of the other states that were once purple or battleground states, as soon as the Democrats won a majority, they almost immediately passed laws changing the voting rules. Oregon, Washington (state), Colorado... they put in vote by mail right away. California expanded their "vote harvesting" rules and got rid of some of the very few Republican representatives that state sent to Congress.

They are not even a little shy about solidifying a win by changing the rules to suit them and enable fraud.

FBI/DOJ personnel changes during SpyGate

What was in Mueller's redacted mandate?

Remember, Mueller was originally given the mandate to continue the FBI's existing counterintelligence investigation into Russian collusion -- effectively, investigating Trump and everyone around him during the campaign. He was also given a secret mandate later on. What that second mandate covers is an interesting question.

There are, I think, two possibilities. It could be either or both.

One possibility is obstruction of justice. This would have to be kept secret from Trump because Trump would be the target of the investigation at that point. It might include other administration figures (AG Sessions for example). There are significant questions as to whether such an investigation against the president is legal, but the existence of an investigation is hard for a judge to oversee.

The other possibility is that Rosenstein told Mueller to investigation the allegations in the dossier and prove or disprove them if he could do so. This is sort of implied by the first part of Mueller authority (the part we know about), but may have been made more explicit in the second. This would be redacted because it would be embarrassing as all hell for the FBI to admit to, given the origins of the dossier, but has the significant advantage of providing political cover for the FBI if he succeeds. They can say "Look, we were right to use the dossier, Mueller proved it true," even if Mueller found no actual collusion.

So if Mueller can make people in the dossier appear dirty enough, people might overlook the fact that they started an investigation on unverified and false information. And that's pretty much exactly what Mueller has been busy doing. He went after Cohen and Manafort, both figures from the dossier, and he dirtied them up with stuff they did not related to Trump (plus that campaign-finance thing that's BS).

So what happened is pretty clear. Mueller started the investigation into collusion and determined fairly enough on -- certainly no later than when he had to fire Strzok and Page -- that there was no there there. Even those two knew there was nothing to the collusion narrative from the beginning, as did the rest of the original DOJ/FBI team that transferred to Mueller. As soon as he found that out, he went to Rosenstein and said "Look, we have a problem. This was fake all along. Your guys knew it, I know it, now you know it. I can't cover for you with nothing. You've got to give me more." So Rosenstein added the extra redacted things to Mueller's mandate -- either obstruction, to threaten Trump with, or investigating the people in the dossier more broadly to provide political cover for the FBI looking into them inappropriately, or both.

And now, as Obama's favorite preacher Jeremiah Wright once said, the FBI's chickens... have come home... to ROOST!

The Yellow Jackets

The media has been so quiet on the Yellow Jackets in France that you could be excused for thinking my title refers to some kind of invasion by weird wasps.

Well, for the record, it doesnt. It refers to the ongoing revolt in France by various groups but mostly, honestly, middle aged, middle class people who have just had middle-class enough and are now setting fires to things and making life hell in the ritzy districts of Paris (and elsewhere.)

You probably thought that was all over and done with, and youd be excused for thinking it, because our media has worked so hard not to report it.

Honestly, I was thinking similar thoughts. Brexit, the Yellow Jackets in France, the Tea Party and the Trump in the US... political elites all over the world are being told it's not working, pay attention to the people's actual needs and wants rather than increasingly insane games of competitive virtue signaling, and generally the elites are not listening.

Well, if the so-called elites will not listen, and will not cede power willingly to those who will... then power will be taken from them, and that rarely ends well.

Those who claim to be smart enough to rule us should be smart enough to see when it is time to step down and get the hell out of the way to rule another day.

A victory for gun rights

Lake County Circuit Court judge ruled Friday that the village of Deerfield overstepped its authority last year when it enacted a ban on assault weapons five years after the Illinois legislature declared such regulations the exclusive power of the state.

Judge Luis Berrones issued a permanent injunction blocking the village from enforcing its ordinance.

In the ruling, Berrones wrote the plaintiff gun owners have a clearly ascertainable right to not be subjected to a preempted and unenforceable ordinance that prohibits possession of assault weapons, imposes financial penalties for keeping them and allows their property to be confiscated.

This should be a relatively uncontroversial victory. State preemption laws are well established.

Ilhan Omar giving secret talks to Islamic groups

Democratic freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) has been holding a series of secret fundraisers with groups that have been tied to the support of terrorism, appearances that have been closed to the press and hidden from public view.

The content of these speeches, given to predominately Muslim audiences, remains unknown, prompting some of Omar's critics to express concern about the type of rhetoric she is using before these paying audiences, particularly in light of the lawmaker's repeated use of anti-Semitic tropes in public.

She has the right to speak privately, of course, but the rest of us have the right to criticize her for it.

Indoctrination, not education

I can clearly recall the first day of class a few semesters ago when I eagerly began a course called American Political Thought at the University of Colorado, Denver.

My excitement quickly soured, however, after Professor Chad Shomura explained to the students in the room that most traditional American Political Thought courses are too focused on the achievements of white men.

As a consequence, he told us he had removed every single white male and their theoretical perspectives from the entire course curriculum.

Perhaps the most striking thing that stands out of the course syllabus is that there is absolutely zero mention of the Founding Fathers (or any other U.S. president or political leader, for that matter) or any of the Western Enlightenment thinkers. Nothing on Washington. Or Jefferson. Or Madison. Or Hamilton. Not a mention of Locke or Rousseau. None of that.

When the legal outcome conflicts with the moral outcome

When you walk into the gas station today, you see that Tina is being held at gunpoint by an armed robber. The robber appears agitated. You think he might actually shoot Tina in the face as she fumbles to open the cash register drawer.

The robber does not see you. You are armed and close enough to the robber that you can hit him with your CCW gun very easily. Tinas life is very clearly being threatened by a crazed robber armed with a deadly weapon.

Would you shoot the robber?

Im betting that a lot more of my readers would answer yes to the shooting question than would write Tina a $50,000 check for her medical procedure.

Yet if you shoot someone, you risk being arrested and sentenced to a long prison term. You risk lawsuits from the person you shot, the business where the shooting occurred, and any innocent bystanders who were traumatized by your actions. Your legal expenses and bail money will very easily surpass the $50,000 mark.

I've seen similar analogies before. In today's society, the smart thing to do is protect yourself and yours; unless you are a police officer with a certain amount of professional immunity, you're better off not acting until your own life or that of your family is at risk.

But ... people don't like that. That doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel moral. It discourages morally correct action, which is to save that life if you can. And the idea that saving that life -- assuming you read the situation accurately -- will cost you $50,000 or more just for society to agree that you did the right thing is seen as both immoral and (unless you have explicitly thought about it ahead of time) unpredictable.

It's an imperfection in our legal system that the heroic course of action can be very costly. But perhaps that's why we call them heroes.

This is what they think of you

The Democrats plan to save social security: illegal aliens

Presidential 2020 hopeful New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said that illegal aliens should receive social security benefits, in another move by Democrats pushing to expand the rights of illegal immigrants in the United States.

Gillibrand made the comment during a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa. saying first, we need comprehensive immigration reform.

Moreover, if you are in this country now you must have the right to pay into Social Security, to pay your taxes, to pay into the local school system and to have a pathway to citizenship. That must happen, said Gillibrand.

Or, they could go home, and pay their own taxes to their own country and experience their own country's glorious retirement system.

The fact is, our social security system is a Ponzi scheme that will inevitably collapse as the population base needed to support ever-growing elderly retirees simply is not there. The Democrat plan to solve this is to import millions of new Democrat voters from third-world nations, convince them to vote for Democrats with identity politics, and try not to mention that becoming legal citizens also means paying taxes like legal citizens and being subject to laws like legal citizens.

In all honesty, that also appears to be the Republican plan, at least for the Establishment types. Except that they plan to lie to the people about it.

Christopher Steele's reputation not as good as advertised

The former boss of the ex-British spy who produced the uncorroborated, salacious dossier on President Donald Trumps alleged Russian collusion says the document is overrated, and wouldnt comment on the character of the man who wrote it.

Sir John Scarlett, who was the chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 2004 to 2009, said after a recent national security panel in Washington, D.C. that the dossier Christopher Steele, who ran MI6s Russia desk from 2006 to 2009, allegedly wrote was overrated and could never be corroborated.

Bold was me. It's likely Steele didn't write all of the dossier.

But it seems that the quality -- or rather, the lack thereof -- of his work was well known within the intelligence community even before Mueller's report was delivered to AG Barr.

New York ban on stun guns ruled unconstitutional

New Yorks sweeping prohibition on the possession and use of tasers and stun guns by all citizens for all purposes, even for self-defense in ones own home, must be declared unconstitutional in light of Heller. To be clear, this conclusion does not foreclose the possibility that some restriction(s) on the possession and/or use of tasers and stun guns would be permissible under the Second Amendment. Other states have already done this New York might consider doing so as well.

But Gorsuch!

Yes. Gorsuch. And Kavanaugh. And there's still time for Ginsburg to ... well, wait. When was she last seen in public again?

Bump stock ban stayed temporarily

The Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has issued a stay on the enforcement of the BATFE's bump stock ban. It is only temporary and is intended to give the judges on the Circuit Court the time needed to study the expedited appeal. It doesn't go to the merits of the case but the judges acknowledged that the March 26th deadline was an issue.

I don't much care about bump stocks, but the precedent of allowing government agencies to change the letter of the law by simple dictat is not one we can let pass lightly. I'm glad there are people fighting this and I wish them luck.

Illinois FOID ruled unconstitutional

It's a district court, meaning appeals are inevitable. But the ruling is narrow and based on sound Constitutional law, particularly as it is focused on possession in the home and the impossibility of compliance with the plain language of the law (eg, everyone in the home would need to have a FOID and have it on their person literally at all times).

I think the smart play by the antis would be to not appeal this. They might -- might! -- win one level up at the Illinois Supreme Court. But if this gets to the national Supreme Court, it tracks so closely to Heller that I have to image the statute is doomed -- and that would put at risk similar statutes in other states.

But, of course, they already have.

We're likely to find out what our new Justices think of the 2nd Amendment sooner rather than later.

Fake News Russian Collusion out, real Ukrainian collusion in

After nearly three years and millions of tax dollars, the Trump-Russia collusion probe is about to be resolved. Emerging in its place is newly unearthed evidence suggesting another foreign effort to influence the 2016 election  this time, in favor of the Democrats.

Ukraines top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his countrys law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.[...]Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenkos probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian's release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton's campaign.

The parliamentarian also secured a court ruling that the leak amounted to an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign, Lutsenko told me. Lutsenko said the tape recording is a serious enough allegation to warrant opening a probe, and one of his concerns is that the Ukrainian law enforcement agency involved had frequent contact with the Obama administrations U.S. Embassy in Kiev at the time.

To be fair, the Ukrainian collusion part is still alleged. But there's tape, a court ruling, an active criminal investigation, and contacts with the Obama administration via the US embassy in the Ukraine.

Clinton cronies starting to see legal trouble from Mueller investigation

Former Obama White House counsel and Clinton impeachment attorney Greg Craig may soon be indicted by the Justice Department for engaging in illegal unregistered overseas lobbying, Fox News reported Tuesday. Craig appears to have been caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller's long-running investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

If charged, Craig would be the first Democrat to face prosecution in Mueller's Russia probe, according to Fox.Mueller referred the Craig case to New York federal prosecutors, as it fell outside his mandate. New York prosecutors subsequently forwarded the case to the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., where a final decision on charges is reportedly imminent.

According to Fox, New York prosecutors are also mulling charges against another Clinton crony, Tony Podesta.

Interesting. I wonder why these were just sitting there until very recently?

The Russian Collusion Propaganda machine

Key Democratic operatives and private investigators who tried to derail Donald Trumps campaign by claiming he was a tool of the Kremlin have rebooted their operation since his election with a multimillion-dollar stealth campaign to persuade major media outlets and lawmakers that the president should be impeached.

The effort has successfully placed a series of questionable stories alleging secret back channels and meetings between Trump associates and Russian spies, while influencing related investigations and reports from Congress.

The operations nerve center is a Washington-based nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project, or TDIP. Among other activities, it pumps out daily research briefings to prominent Washington journalists, as well as congressional staffers, to keep the Russia collusion narrative alive.

Combine this story with Devin Nunes announcing he is suing twitter about shadowbanning and coordinated harassment campaigns, and you start to see what looks like a planned counteroffensive.